Conventionally, an ultrasound diagnosis apparatus plays an important role in today's medical care as a medical diagnostic imaging apparatus that has various advantages, such as simple operationality, noninvasiveness without risk of radiation exposure, and compactness of the apparatus scale.
Specifically, an ultrasound diagnosis apparatus can display a state of motion of an examination subject in real time, for example, beats of a heart or a motion of an embryo, by a simple operation of touching an ultrasound probe onto a body surface. Moreover, the ultrasound diagnosis apparatus has a high level of safety because of its noninvasiveness, thereby being able to perform examinations repeatedly. Furthermore, the ultrasound diagnosis apparatus is small in scale of apparatus, compared with other medical diagnostic imaging apparatuses, such as an X-ray diagnosis apparatus, an X-ray Computed Tomography (CT) apparatus, and a Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) apparatus, so that an examination at a bed side by being moved there can be easily performed. Moreover, among ultrasound diagnosis apparatuses without risk of radiation exposure, an apparatus that is down-sized to be carried with one hand has been developed, such ultrasound diagnosis apparatus can be easily used in a medical practice, such as a maternity, or home care.
According to an examination using such ultrasound diagnosis apparatus, an ultrasound image rendered of a tissue directly under a touched ultrasound probe can be created and displayed in real time, so that a plurality of ultrasound images is recorded by moving the ultrasound probe on an examination target portion during the examination. When recording, to identify which portion of the subject is taken onto each ultrasound image, a “mark” indicating positional information is recorded onto the image. Particularly, in a case of examination of a mamma, because no organ or no blood vessel to be a landmark is included, the “mark” is noteworthy and required for recording an ultrasound image. Such “mark” can be a body mark representing an organ to be examined, or a mark indicating a scanning position with ultrasound in the organ.
When registering information about an ultrasound image recorded in this way (image information) onto a chart as a report, a reading doctor writes a position at which the ultrasound image is taken and a comment obtained from the ultrasound image, onto a schema on which an examination target portion can be recognized at a glance.
The reading doctor writes a comment on a lesion into the schema after the ultrasound examination is performed while reconfirming ultrasound images and data collected from the ultrasound images, thereby creating a report. The schema onto which a comment on a lesion is described is a schema manually rendered by the reading doctor, or a schema for a report that is registered in an electric chart system. Furthermore, a method of managing a report created by such processing has been also developed.
According to a conventional report preparation, after an examination with ultrasound is performed, all images need to be checked and then only required information needs to be reconfirmed and recorded, so that the operation requires a reading doctor to expend time and effort.